Today is the birthday of Sam Cooke, The King of Soul, who would have been 80 years old, had he not been murdered in 1964… Sam Cooke sang gospel, R&B, soul, and pop - and played a crucial role in developing the soul style and successfully crossing it...

Today is the birthday of Sam Cooke, The King of Soul, who would have been 80 years old, had he not been murdered in 1964…

Sam Cooke sang gospel, R&B, soul, and pop - and played a crucial role in developing the soul style and successfully crossing it over from the (black) r&b charts into the mainstream. Without Cooke, no Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye…

By 1964 Sam Cooke was coming into his own as a fully mature soul singer, whose writing was taking a turn towards the type of political and social commentary that Marvin Gaye perfected a few years later… In December of that year Sam Cooke was murdered...

By 1964 Sam Cooke was coming into his own as a fully mature soul singer, whose writing was taking a turn towards the type of political and social commentary that Marvin Gaye perfected a few years later…

In December of that year Sam Cooke was murdered at a seedy motel under circumstances that have never been fully clarified. Police photos of the crime scene show Cooke, shot dead, almost naked, except for a blazer, slumped just inside a door that has been kicked in…

Here we prefer remembering Sam like this, radiant in his prime…

Lord Byron, Romantic poet, hero, hunk: Jan. 22, 1788 - 1824… Thou whose spell can raise the dead, Bid the prophet’s form appear. “Samuel, raise thy buried head! "King, behold the phantom seer!” Earth yawn’d; he stood the centre of a cloud: Light...

Lord Byron, Romantic poet, hero, hunk: Jan. 22, 1788 - 1824…

Thou whose spell can raise the dead,
Bid the prophet’s form appear.
“Samuel, raise thy buried head!
"King, behold the phantom seer!”
Earth yawn’d; he stood the centre of a cloud:
Light changed its hue, retiring from his shroud.
Death stood all glassy in the fixed eye:
His hand was withered, and his veins were dry;
His foot, in bony whiteness, glitterd there,
Shrunken and sinewless, and ghastly bare;
From lips that moved not and unbreathing frame,
Like cavern’d winds the hollow acccents came.
Saul saw, and fell to earth, as falls the oak,
At once, and blasted by the thunder-stroke.

“Why is my sleep disquieted?
"Who is he that calls the dead?
"Is it thou, Oh King? Behold
"Bloodless are these limbs, and cold:
"Such are mine; and such shall be
"Thine, to-morrow, when with me:
"Ere the coming day is done,
"Such shalt thou be, such thy son.
"Fare thee well, but for a day,
"Then we mix our mouldering clay.
"Thou, thy race, lie pale and low,
"Pierced by shafts of many a bow;
"And the falchion by thy side,
"To thy heart, thy hand shall guide:
"Crownless, breathless, headless fall,
"Son and sire, the house of Saul!”

August Strindberg, Swedish playwright central to the development of Modernist drama, multi-talented artist, tortured soul: Jan. 22, 1849 - 1912… ‘I am everywhere, in the ocean which is my blood, in the hills which are my bones’ Photo, ca. 1891

August Strindberg, Swedish playwright central to the development of Modernist drama, multi-talented artist, tortured soul: Jan. 22, 1849 - 1912…

‘I am everywhere, in the ocean which is my blood, in the hills which are my bones’

Photo, ca. 1891

Charismatic Russian monk and mystic, Grigori Rasputin (Jan. 22, 1869 - 1916) was an Orthodox clergy-man who rose to great prominence with the family of the last Russian Czar because of his supposed healing and prophetic powers… Photo, 1908

Charismatic Russian monk and mystic, Grigori Rasputin (Jan. 22, 1869 - 1916) was an Orthodox clergy-man who rose to great prominence with the family of the last Russian Czar because of his supposed healing and prophetic powers…

Photo, 1908

Francis Picabia (Jan. 22, 1879 - 1953) - French artist (painter and poet) - Dadaist, and later Surrealist: Induction Valve (Soupape d'admission), 1917 - Gouache over an engineering blueprint (Private collection) This mecanomorphic painting is part of...

Francis Picabia (Jan. 22, 1879 - 1953) - French artist (painter and poet) - Dadaist, and later Surrealist:

Induction Valve (Soupape d'admission), 1917 - Gouache over an engineering blueprint (Private collection)

This mecanomorphic painting is part of a series of works executed in New York in 1917 around the time when Picabia, Duchamp, Man Ray and other American artists were creating imaginary enigmatic machines out of derision toward the mechanical spirit of modern American civilization and the machine mentality promoted by the Italian futurists.

Born Jan. 22, 1953: Jim Jarmusch, brilliant indie/underground film director - now more mainstream, though… Jarmusch’s off-beat, cult films from the 80s are still amazing: Stranger than Paradise, Mystery Train, Night on Earth - later high points...

Born Jan. 22, 1953: Jim Jarmusch, brilliant indie/underground film director - now more mainstream, though…

Jarmusch’s off-beat, cult films from the 80s are still amazing: Stranger than Paradise, Mystery Train, Night on Earth - later high points include, in ‘95, Dead Man - and in 2005, Broken Flowers…